It’s hard to believe it’s finally happening, but the Nissan GT-R is now on its way out in its home market of Japan. Since intensity often fades with time, it’s easy to forget the stranglehold this thing had on the culture in 2008, as it truly was a landmark machine that influenced an entire era of performance cars. At the same time, the path this once-giant-slayer took over the past 18 years draws parallels to Nissan’s own situation. If you want to know part of the reason why Nissan seems desperate for a merger, just look at the history of the R35.
Hang on, didn’t the R35 GT-R already shuffle out of showrooms? In North America, yes. The last year for Nissan’s turbocharged all-wheel-drive monster on this continent was 2024, although a handful still linger in showrooms because the market for a new car unveiled during the Dubya years is slim and some dealers just can’t stop marking stuff up. However, in Japan, the R35 lived a little bit longer.
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In fact, it’s still alive, but barely. Nissan has announced on its Japanese consumer website that it’s closing the order books for the R35 GT-R with the following message:
We have received many orders for the Nissan GT-R, and we have now finished accepting orders for the planned production quantity.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our many customers for their patronage over the years since its release in 2007.
Damn, 2007.
The world sure looked different back then. The first iPhone launched, and seemingly everyone on the hype train immediately downloaded an app that make it look like they were drinking a fake beer, chiefly because iOS was very much in its early days. Consumers first encountered the wrath of Windows Vista. Tumblr was launched to the public, and by the public, I mean fandoms. Ringtone rap was big, guitars were still heard on the radio, and, um, R. Kelly appeared on the year-end Billboard singles list. In some ways, we’ve made significant progress since then, even if the current landscape of algorithms and TikTok-friendly songs that fall apart after the hooks still leave room for complaints.
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It’s a similar deal in the world of cars. When the current Nissan GT-R launched, it ushered in a whole new era of performance cars, the turbocharged all-wheel-drive quick-shifting automatics. At the time, the Porsche 911 Turbo featured either a six-speed manual or a Tiptronic slushbox, which left the dual-clutch Nissan GT-R in a league of its own.
While never a delicate car, it served up devastating results to the competition, and quickly became the blueprint for next 18 years. These days, you can get an automatic, all-wheel-drive, turbocharged BMW M3 that’s a world away from the high-revving, rear-wheel-drive, V8-powered model that entered production in September 2007.
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So, has the GT-R-ification of an entire industry improved the breed? Objectively, it could be argued so. Advancements in output, chassis development, and tire technology mean that new cars are faster than ever, laying down monster straight-line figures and offering significant skidpad grip.
An eleven-second quarter-mile time used to be genuine supercar stuff, and now a BMW X5 M SUV will hang with an early GT-R through the quarter-mile. What about subjectively, though? The subjective aspects of a great performance car — drama, feedback, and involvement — are harder to find than ever before. Cheaper performance cars like the Mazda MX-5 and Hyundai Elantra N still have it, and upper-echelon rarities like the Porsche Spyder RS and Lotus Emira still focus on making the driver feel special, but most cars that follow the GT-R formula don’t feel like they love their drivers back.
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I’ve touched on this before, so allow me to posit something new: The demise of the GT-R is also a sign that the old Nissan is pretty much over. Just like how BMW seems to build fewer Ultimate Driving Machines than ever before and Dodge is no longer the Hemi brand, Nissan isn’t the out-there brand it used to be. There won’t be another Infiniti FX45, the new Z is a retread of a two-decade-old platform, the brand sells no hybrids in America, and the early lead built by the Leaf simply wasn’t capitalized on. As the GT-R stagnated, so did Nissan itself.
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It’s a shame because beyond the GT-R, Nissan was at the forefront of some innovative stuff in the 2000s that changed the industry for better or worse. Beyond building the modern performance car formula, Nissan carried wider adoption of carbon fiber reinforced plastics, like the driveshaft in the 370Z and the radiator support in the G35. It brought features like xenon headlights and a heated steering wheel out of the luxury brand realm and into the Maxima. It gave BMW a serious bludgeoning with the Infiniti G35, at a time when BMW was arguably at its engineering peak. It was the first brand to go big on CVTs, while many other mainstream cars offered four-speed or five-speed automatic transmissions. It’s not always an improvement, but innovation drives success.
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In a way, the GT-R is a symbol of why Nissan’s in a bit of a state right now. Like much of Nissan’s lineup, it was updated with new materials and creature comforts, but the bulk of the engineering underneath is familiar to anyone who’s been into cars for quite a while. Just as the GT-R ceded ground to the competition and found itself in a tricky cost-benefit situation, Nissan finds itself in a precarious position right now. Outside of the e-Power hybrid tech used overseas, it’s low on seriously compelling product, and its corporate withering is largely its own doing. While we don’t yet know how Nissan will find its way out of this one, a new GT-R would be the apex of a potential resurgence, wouldn’t it?
Top graphic image: Nissan
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Nissan sold their soul to
the devilRenault in the pursuit of selling appliances that resemble automobiles. Then along came a savior,JesusHonda, willing to forgive all of their sins if they just repent and sign the papers, but alas, this was not to be and what we have now is a dead company still walking the earth, but with one foot already in Hell (I’m talking about the metaphorical construct and not the city in Michigan).I’m not sure that’s entirely fair to Nissan as a whole. They’ve taken some pretty big swings technology-wise in the years since the GT-R released. Unfortunately, most of those swings have been spectacular whiffs, especially from a reliability standpoint (which is especially damning for a mainstream Japanese brand).
EVs? Yeah, the Leaf was first, but it also had air-cooled batteries that failed far too early in many cases and IMHO poisoned the EV well for a lot of buyers. CVTs? They went all-in and I think we all know how that went. Variable compression engines? An engineering marvel (I still can’t wrap my head around how the bottom end of those things work, even after I Do Cars tore one down) that has had exactly the level of reliability you’d expect from such a complex system (IIUC).
I’m hardly going to join the Nissan Defense Force or anything, but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize them for not doing any engineering. It’s more that they’re on the bleeding edge of a bunch of tech that didn’t work out the way they hoped.
A lot of companies do bleeding edge technology, but limit its risks to shield the overall company.
Did you know BMW had a hydrogen powered car in the early 2000s? Probably not because they made very few of them as real world test fleet and gave up on them when they didn’t work out. Same with their first electric car, a converted 2 series coupe. They didn’t put these technologies as the only option in their main production vehicles.
It’s kind of the difference between an innovation powerhouse or cautionary tale.
Imagine it’s 2010 and you walk into a Nissan showroom, ready to plunk down $100k on a GT-R. Right next to it on the floor is a Versa for $9999. Would it make you stop and think?
It’s kinda inductive of Nissan it’s self. 18 years is a very long model life. I guess they did do some changes but nothing too big. The same as their frontier before it got a redesign. It will exist in a weird place of automotive history where the computers are handling things but you are necessarily driving a computer like you do with BEV. I guess with the z there isn’t room in the lineup and who is paying 120k for a Nissan especially one that’s been around for 18 years.
No manual, no care. Also it drives itself. /yawn
I remember being a teenager when these came out and being extremely excited anytime I saw one in the wild, especially the first time ever. I still have the pictures I took on my first smart phone when I spotted my first one in a non-descript Hispanic restaurant parking lot.
Sadly, the minimal changes that were made to the platform throughout production and how souless they feel is what I have come to associate them with. They are scalpel like in their precision, but as I have grown I have found that precision to be my very issue with them and most other new cars. They drive themselves, and the owners oftentimes seem to have this air about them indicating they feel this is a result of their own talents which is very rarely the case. This was definitely influenced by the time I spent working at a performance shop which regularly had GT-Rs come through, and the apathetic feeling throughout the shop regarding them as a well performing appliance, versus an icon.
When I drove one, my overall impression was “why would you make something this fast so completely and utterly boring?”. Like driving a video game. Porsches are never boring.
As I have said in regards to EVs, and it applies to this car in spades too – if I just want my innards re-arranged by g-forces, a season ticket to Six Flags is a whole lot cheaper and safer, and similarly (not) involving.
I feel this in my soul. If I’m going to drive a fast car I want it to be something I have to respect and even fear to an extent. That way my skills grow with the car and learning how to tame it will be much more rewarding. If it’s so technically perfect I can instantly take it to an HPDE day at the local track and be one of the fastest cars there as an (relative, I’ve done a few track days but I’m hardly a track rat) amateur I don’t want anything to do with it.
Honestly it’s one of the reasons I traded my GTI in on my Kona N 3 years ago. The GTI is a fun car but due to all the electronic nannies and whatnot you really couldn’t go past 7.5/10. At least in stock for a street car through and through and you can never fully defeat traction or stability control. I had a DSG as well and the damn thing wouldn’t even let you hit redline in manual mode.
The N is a different beast. When everything is off, it’s OFF. It lift off oversteers out the wazoo if you’re not careful. It torque steers so hard it tries to rip the wheel out of your hands under hard acceleration. It rides like shit. It’ll let you bang it off the rev limiter and cut fuel to your heart’s content. It just feels way sketchier in all the best ways and it’s forced me to become a better driver.
I probably won’t have it for more than another year or two because it’s too small for our growing family but I’ll never forget it. I also won’t forget what driving a Camaro SS and the rear breaking free felt like, or nailing an overpowered car on a backroad and reaching to to jail speeds unintentionally the first few times felt like.
We don’t drive stat sheets, we drive cars.
I just don’t have much need for speed, but I have a need for a car that has *feel*. For me, my ’17 GTI Sport was a nearly perfect reasonably-priced daily driver (and I continue to kick myself for falling prey to Carvana’s ridiculous offer for it). If they made a long-roof GTI it would be perfect, it was just not quite long enough for some of my needs. I never once turned the nannies off – why would I? I owned a BMW M235i before the GTI – I found it boring as hell once it was in the States (good fun in Europe where you can stretch a car’s legs a whole lot more). Too much speed is just not interesting to me – there is a happy medium there. My 75hp (on a good day) Triumph Spitfire is a whole lot more fun than any car I have driven with 4-5X the horsepower. I had a Camaro SS as a rental once, I did not find it fun at all. Too much muchness.
I really have not much interest in going to tracks, and not at all in street cars, BTDT, probably can’t be bothered again. I have a friend with a garage full of Formula Fords and Formula Vs. – THOSE are the cars you want to take to a track, and as a bonus they are dirt cheap. And you don’t need one to get you home at the end of the day.
…and then you’ll sell it, calling it “cherry, never driven hard,” and someone else will get your ragged-out Hyundai.
It’s had all of its preventative maintenance on schedule (which is documented on the CarFax), it’s been in 0 accidents, has all of 16,000 miles on it after nearly 3 years, and other than some small bumps and bruises here and there it’s in great shape cosmetically.
It’s not “ragged out” at all lol. I mostly baby my cars…but I also don’t see the point of buying an affordable performance car and not having fun with it. It’s a goddamn Hyundai, not some rare Porsche or something. It’s not intended to be bubble wrapped and taken out once a year on a nice day.
The R35 also has a lot of issues with rust from what I saw. We had a 2015 with 79k miles from New York come in and it was mechanically totaled from all the salt damage. This was in 2020. I have heard other complaints from people who live in areas that don’t salt also complaining of similar.
The Nissan logo symbolize rising sun (or something along that) in Japan, but this is more of a sunset. They need to get their financials in order to give us the next generation for the new sunrise.
Twenty years ago, Nissan was thisclose to H & T, and blended the best of H driving dynamics with T reliability. Then, something happened.
Mazda and Subaru blew right by them. Nissan’s response was more and more mediocrity, to the point that they’ve become Korean.
Sad, sad, sad.
Carlos Ghosn is what happened. He pulled them back from the brink but should’ve been let go immediately thereafter. He was so obsessed with cutting costs that he allowed basically zero innovation apart from the Leaf and Murano CrossCabriolet.
Still really wish i could get one of these, but the prices have stayed nice and high
They’re also hilariously overpriced at MSRP
I’m often impressed but also saddened by just how expensive even the oldest models are. I would buy GTR long before I would ever think about any exotic or supercar. There’s something visceral and face punchy about them, in the spirit of Vipers. Even if other cars now come faster, the GTR still FEELS like that to me.
i have never driven one, but kept hoping i would see one come down to something a bit more affordable.
This car was either the beginning or the end depending on your perspective. I was a teenager when it came out and it’s hard to overstate how big of a deal it was, especially considering that we got it here in the States after years of the R34 being bedroom poster car forbidden fruit and a tooner icon.
At the time this really did eviscerate much more storied competition and in all honesty it was somehow still pretty competitive until the last couple of years. I do think that as an engineering exercise it’s a pretty damn special car and that it forced other manufacturers to up their game quite a bit.
That being said, as Thomas suggests…because of this we now have an endless stream of turbocharged all wheel drive sports cars that weigh 4,000+ pounds, offer cutting edge automatics, and can do 3ish second 0-60s and low 11/high 10 second quarter miles every single time without asking anything of their drivers. Literally anyone can activate launch control and replicate the numbers car publications get in their testing.
It’s definitely a double edged sword and unfortunately I think this car’s legacy is always going to be tied to what proceeded it…which is more or less an era of effortless but soulless speed. As long as you’ve got a big budget you can walk into any German luxury showroom and drive away in something that will go toe to toe with a GTR while coddling you and 3 adult friends in lavish luxury.
In a vacuum I love this car because of what it stood for at the time and how it was one of those rare non-supercars that managed to become a household name even amongst normies. But I do understand why people criticize it and what came after. Regardless, this could very well be the dying breath of Nissan and it’s a damn shame how far they’ve fallen.
For those of us about 10 years older, it was definitely a throwback to the 90s wars between 3000GT, RX-7, and Supra Turbo (honorable mention to SVX, I guess). At the time, most of those cars were sub-$40k; similarly, the entry-level GT-R almost 15 years later was introduced around $65k, IIRC — same basic idea, even though it was a lot bigger and heavier.
Today, I guess it’s only Dodge left doing this on any large scale.
I’m right in between you two. I was fresh out of college when this came out, and in my 20’s I ran in circles with a handful of guys who had GT-Rs. Godzilla was a darn icon and while a lot of purists hated the “Playstation supercar”, it absolutely turned heads and got respect. I still remember watching the yearly videos from Texas where the newest modded up GT-Rs would go toe to toe with the Gallardos on the drag strip. The R35 was the pinnacle of affordable performance, and I just enjoyed hanging around in its shadow (literally, at club meets and cruises) in my lowly Z33 while feeling awesome by association.
However, as the article points out… this story ultimately turned out to be a tragedy. The plucky Japanese brand I grew up loving is now no more. This truly feels like the end of an era for me personally.
I wouldn’t peg the GTR as beginning of the end, but the proliferation of what Ferrari was already doing at a far more visible level (e.g. with a mainstream brand) of moving away from manual transmission vehicles to ones which they could sell to anyone who brought them money without needing to learn (and make them more driveable).
Sometimes you got to rip off the band-aid. It was a good band-aid, even a very entertaining band-aid with a lot of fans who enjoy all that the band-aid has provided over it’s many years. The time has come unfortunately, as its edges are peeling up and it’s barely holding on. Good bye band-aid.